Why is the Trump administration threatening to deport this Iranian man to Australia?

RNZ News

15 hours ago

By
Brad Ryan
, ABC
Reza Zavvar has been an active contributor to his local community for years, his loved ones say.
Photo:
Supplied
The US government is threatening to deport an Iranian man to Australia - even though he has no connection to Australia and has lived in the US since 1985.
Reza Zavvar, a 52-year-old recruiter from Maryland, has been targeted for deportation because of a marijuana possession conviction from the 1990s, his lawyer says.
A court order means he cannot be returned to Iran because of the risk of persecution there.
So immigration authorities say they are sending him to either Australia or Romania after arresting him in the street near his home in late June.
"They got him while he was walking his dog in his quiet suburban neighbourhood," his lawyer, Ava Benach, told the ABC.
"And they detained him and sent him to Texas to hold him, and they said: 'We're gonna deport you to Australia or Romania.'
"How they picked those countries is a mystery to me."
His family, friends and locals are fundraising for a legal fight. They say Mr Zavvar had been quietly contributing to his community for years, helping out his elderly neighbours and making sandwiches each week for those in need of food.
He had adopted his dog from a local shelter and recently moved in with his mother to help care for his grandmother.
"After 40 years of living in the US, Reza knows no other home," his sister, Maryam, wrote as part of an online petition.
"He waits in a privately run detention centre, thousands of miles from anything familiar, while bureaucrats decide his future."
Mr Zavvar's case has highlighted a controversial strategy increasingly used by the Trump administration as part of its mass deportation regime - sending migrants to countries they have no connection to, sometimes using historical low-level misdemeanours as justification.
But immigration lawyers said they had not seen Australia listed as a destination before.
"Most of us in the immigration bar have been hearing about cases being sent to Central and South America," said Mahsa Khanbabai, an elected director on the American Immigration Lawyers Association board.
"Normally, what we've been seeing is that the Trump administration is targeting countries where they feel they have some leverage, that they feel they can push around and bully.
"Australia is not a country that we would normally consider to be in such a position."
A DHS Notice of Removal document, dated July 1, says ICE intends to deport Reza Zavvar to Australia.
Photo:
Supplied
The Australian government said it had not been contacted by US authorities about the case.
"There have been no new agreements made with the Trump administration on immigration," a government spokesperson said.
Despite repeated requests for clarification, neither Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) nor the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) explained why Australia had been selected.
But in a statement, DHS assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin said: "ICE continues to try and find a country willing to accept this criminal illegal alien."
Mr Zavvar's sister said her brother had "built his life in Maryland, surrounded by his loving family, including his parents, sister, and cousins".
"He was a natural athlete, excelling in football during high school, where he was affectionately known as a 'gentle giant' - competitive on the field but kind and warm-hearted off."
He had a green card, allowing him permanent residence in the US - but his lawyer says his past marijuana-related conviction was later used to jeopardise that status.
In 2004, an airport agent noticed his conviction and started a process that could have led to deportation.
Reza Zavvar was arrested by immigration agents while walking his dog.
Photo:
Supplied
But three years later, a judge issued a "withholding of removal" order, preventing his return to Iran.
DHS says his previous conviction - for attempted possession of a controlled substance - remains a reason to deport him.
"Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US," the department's Ms McLaughlin said.
"Zavvar had almost 20 years to self-deport and leave the United States."
The Trump administration has been pushing other countries to accept deportees who cannot return to their countries of origin: either because those countries will not take them back, or because of protection orders like Mr Zavvar's.
The "withholding of removal" orders theoretically allow the US to deport the migrant to a different country, but that is historically rare.
"We've never really seen people being sent to third countries in my 25 years of practice," Ms Khanbabai said.
"When the UK started doing that a few years ago, I remember thinking, what a horrendous situation, thank God the United States doesn't do that. And now here we are seeing the US carry out these very same inhumane, what I would consider illegal, practices."
The US government recently struck deals with several African countries, which have opened the door to more of these deportations.
Small numbers of migrants - from countries including Vietnam, Cuba and Jamaica - have been sent to South Sudan and Eswatini.
And on Wednesday, local time, Reuters reported that Rwanda had said it would accept up to 250 deportees, "in part because nearly every Rwandan family has experienced the hardships of displacement, and our societal values are founded on reintegration and rehabilitation".
The Trump administration says it is delivering on an election promise to crack down on the millions of people in the US who don't have legal rights to live there, and especially those with criminal convictions.
"Under President Trump … if you break the law, you will face the consequences," Ms McLaughlin said. "Criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the US."
But immigration lawyers and advocates say Mr Zavvar is among what appears to be a growing number of Iranians detained since the US air strikes on Iran in June.
Green card and student visa holders, many of whom have clean records, are among them, Ms Khanbabai said.
The Trump administration says it is delivering on an election promise.
Photo:
AFP
The lawyer, who is Iranian American and has many Iranian clients, said the community felt it was being targeted.
"The Trump administration claimed that they were going to be going after criminals, yet the vast majority of people, including the Iranians, don't have any serious criminal offences or any at all," she said.
"And so we're trying to figure out, is there an uptick of this focus on Iranians … or is this just part of the massive targeting of and scapegoating of immigrants?"
Mr Zavvar's lawyer hopes her client's arrest will prove to be a publicity stunt that doesn't lead to his deportation.
"I honestly think that they wanted to make a show of arresting Iranians in the wake of our bombing of the Iranian nuclear facility," Ms Benach said.
"What people are going to remember is that the administration was arresting Iranians when they were certain that the Iranians were going to retaliate … and then six months from now, they might have to release them under the law, but we'll have moved on to something else."
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ABC